AI firms buy second-hand books for destructive scanning surge

Computers that write like humans need lots of books to learn from.

Some companies that make these computers are buying old books to read them.

A company called Anthropic has a secret project called Project Panama.

In this project, they buy many books, mostly used ones, and scan them.

Scanning the books is destructive because the book spines are ripped off.

The pages are scanned very fast and the leftover parts are recycled.

This is why used book sellers in the UK are suddenly selling more books.

The internet is full of low-quality computer-written text, so books are seen as better sources of knowledge.

Even though selling more books sounds good, the publishing industry is still struggling.

The books are being destroyed to feed the computers, which is a sad fate for them.